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Updated: July 23, 2025
Then she fell back, panting, on the ivory couch; but Taanach passed an amber necklace with dolphin's teeth about her neck to banish terrors, and Salammbo said in an almost stifled voice: "Go and bring me Schahabarim." Her father had not wished her to enter the college of priestesses, nor even to be made at all acquainted with the popular Tanith.
Although he had no beard he had the cloak of a priest of Moloch on his shoulder, and in his belt that species of knife which they employed for cutting up the sacred meat, and which terminated, at the end of the handle, in a golden spatula. He cleft Matho's breast with a single blow, then snatched out the heart and laid it upon the spoon; and Schahabarim, uplifting his arm, offered it to the sun.
Taanach disappeared, and Schahabarim, raising one arm in the air, began: "Before the gods darkness alone was, and a breathing stirred dull and indistinct as the conscience of a man in a dream. It contracted, creating Desire and Cloud, and from Desire and Cloud there issued primitive Matter. This was a water, muddy, black, icy and deep.
The old slave was amazed at these preparations, without daring, however, to ask any questions; and the day, which had been fixed by Schahabarim, arrived when Salammbo was to set out.
At last seeing that she did not understand: "You will be alone with him." "Well?" she said. "Alone in his tent." "What then?" Schahabarim bit his lips. He sought for some phrase, some circumlocution. "If you are to die, that will be later," he said; "later! fear nothing! and whatever he may undertake to do, do not call out! do not be frightened!
But the priest, with a smile of disdain said: "You will never consent!" She entreated him. At last Schahabarim said to her: "You must go to the Barbarians and recover the zaimph!" She sank down upon the ebony stool, and remained with her arms stretched out between her knees and shivering in all her limbs, like a victim at the altar's foot awaiting the blow of the club.
Sometimes for several days she would refuse to eat. She could see in a dream troubled stars wandering beneath her feet. She would call Schahabarim, and when he came she had nothing to say to him. She could not live without the relief of his presence.
Schahabarim remembered Hamilcar's orders, and replied: "No, I have nothing more to teach you!" "A genius," she resumed, "impels me to this love.
He looked up at her, holding her thus between his knees, and repeating: "How beautiful you are! how beautiful you are!" His eyes, which were continually fixed upon hers, pained her; and the uncomfortableness, the repugnance increased in so acute a fashion that Salammbo put a constraint upon herself not to cry out. The thought of Schahabarim came back to her, and she resigned herself.
This man, with his giant stature, who was master of the zaimph, ruled Rabbetna as much as did Baal, and seemed to her to be surrounded by the same fulgurations; and then the souls of the gods sometimes visited the bodies of men. Did not Schahabarim in speaking of him say that she was to vanquish Moloch? They were mingled with each other; she confused them together; both of them were pursuing her.
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